The AIF Project

Arthur MAINSTONE

Regimental number736
OccupationLabourer
Address32 Bullanaming Street, Redfern, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinBrother, C Mainstone, 32 Bullanaming Street, Redfern, New South Wales
Enlistment date11 August 1914
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll15 February 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameAustralian Naval & Military Expeditionary Force (Tropical Unit), F Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/112/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 19 August 1914
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll19th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 15 March 1918
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
89
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Agnes MAINSTONE
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'London Gazette'
Date: 11 May 1917

Other detailsMedals: Military Medal, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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